


line of longingtude

by politicalmedievalistnerd



Category: Worldshaker
Genre: Alternate History, Autism Spectrum, Gen, Gender Roles, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Misogyny, Meltdown, Period-Typical Sexism, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 04:41:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14394519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/politicalmedievalistnerd/pseuds/politicalmedievalistnerd
Summary: It's Gillabeth with a hard 'G' and a square jaw and straight skirts and the world is soft and rickety and curving.





	line of longingtude

Gillabeth. It’s supposed to be pretty, elegant, feminine, but she crafts a hardness out of it that others cannot see. She emphasises the ‘ _ G’,  _ harshly corrects whenever someone tries to call her ‘Jill’ or ‘Beth’. It is a hard ‘G’, she says, and you would do well to remember it. You can read excellently, I do assume? Then it should not be a problem.

It does not matter, though, how others say it, for there is  _ Colbert,  _ with his hard ‘ _ C’  _ and  _ ‘B’  _ and ‘ _ T’ _ , as opposed to her breathy ‘-beth’, and she could kill him for having the nerve to be named as such. She resents the roll of a double ‘l’ and thinks longingly of what being a boy, being a ‘ _ Gilbert’  _ could’ve gotten her. It seems that He had other plans, however, and it is stupid that she should need to be male to have hard sounds in her name. She has hard edges and is still female, a hard jaw, hard eyes. Her gowns are not frilled but crisp and clean. Her grandmother, Lady Ebnolia, drags her to tea with the Turbots, and she counts out the syllables.  _ ‘Por-pen-tine’  _ is more than ‘ _ Tur-bot’,  _ but it sounds too flowery, Porpentine, and she seethes as she watches the frilly pink Sephaltina with the surname  _ Turbot  _ and thinks it is awfully unfair.

What’s in a name? Some distant cousin, from another Porpentine branch, has a daughter, and immediately they dress her in pink and frills despite the way the baby screams and the sound of rustling silk. Marianella, they call her, and all Gillabeth’s stupid mother can manage is to coo and tell the little one how pretty she is. When it is Gillabeth’s turn to hold her, she says that Marianella will be smart, and brave, and the others become hushed, and the child is taken quickly.  _ ‘Mar-i-a-nell-a’ _ has hardly any edges and Gillabeth smacks her fingers against the side of her bed that night, waiting for the feedback. She has done wrong again, she was not made for a world of water. The juggernaut shakes and trembles and she wants to scream, to force it to stay still. 

She plays the piano, as they ask of her, and nearly breaks her hands, hitting every note with perfection and fury. They have laced her up so tight that her waist is the size of her elbow but she does not falter, does not faint. Her lungs beat like wings against her cracking ribs and it is her only enjoyment, the hardness of it, the pain and sharpness. She knows what it is, at least, she can clarify it, categorise it. She undresses later and her stomach is pink and purple and swollen, lumpy. And so she batters herself again, head hitting the cupboard door until everything is clean lines again. 

Antrobus is her responsibility. Gillabeth loves him, she does, but it burns to say his name with its hard lines because it only makes hers seem weak. The little tot crushes her fingernails in his tight grasps and she cannot find it in herself to care until later, when she has to file her nails into nice neat curves and it kills her soul, the sound and repeat of the  _ scratch scratch scratch  _ and the curves when curves are wrong. She can dance to and fro in a straight line but never manages the spins, they dizzy her and confuse her and everything comes to a grinding halt. As Antrobus learns to walk they go only in straight lines, she only walks back and forwards in straight lines, he must learn to turn corners himself. Gillabeth likes to know what is ahead, as opposed to Colbert, who is all stupidity and confusion and dabbles in greys, in the ethics Professor Twillip taught him. Gillabeth only sees in blacks and whites, blues and reds. 

_ Circles,  _ she thinks,  _ there are too many circles  _ and this is not at all what she wanted, what she hoped for. Instead of neat lines, neat rows of desks and neat, careful strokes of ink there are circles, of giggling girls and boisterous boys and she sits alone and can spot, from half a mile away, that the lockers are not all even. Boys like her brother get the bigger ones and boys like Septimus Trant are given the smaller ones, and it would not bother her if they lined up, which they do not. They are uneven and that’s why she hates puzzles, they never fit together squarely but instead have rounded joins that make her ill. At least Sir Mormus, her grandfather, is straight lines and angles and has all the firmness she needs beneath her. Lady Ebnolia is round and goes round and round in circles when she talks and has round pendants and rings and rounded toes on her shoes.

For a group so unorganised, so uncivilised, they walk in straight lines and speak straight, they show her no circles and their clothes have no circles and no frills and no horrible-sounding silk and maybe that’s why she helps them, because the ‘ _ t’  _ at the end of  _ ‘Colbert’  _ is nicer than the hiss at the end of ‘ _ Mormus’  _ and their leader - their Supreme Commander - is a girl, is a  _ woman  _ and when she shuts her eyes, the world is in straight lines, the lift is in a straight line. “Colbert,” she says, straight-forward and straight at him and this is the path she has to take.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe nobody has written Worldshaker fanfic on Ao3 before! Anyway, here is some. Read the book for school.


End file.
